Shinobi Legions / Shinobi X / Shin Shinobi Den (新・忍伝) - Saturn (1995)

Japanese Cover

American Cover

European Cover

Shin Shinobi Den (New Shinobi Story), or known as Shinobi Legions in North America and Shinobi X in Europe, is an early Saturn release that used digitized graphics for all of the characters. Taking control of a new ninja named Sho, the controls and mechanics are very similar to Shinobi III, although a little more sluggish and clumsy. For the first time, there are separate buttons to use a sword and throw shurikens. And compared to the other games, there's a far bigger emphasis on swordplay than ever before, since the shurikens are slow, even more limited in number and fairly weak, even though you can now throw them upwards. You'll also spend much more time blocking and parrying enemy attacks. New melee moves include a spinning sword slash, a downward thrust manuever, and the ability to reflect enemies projectiles back with your sword, though this move is hard to time effectively. The magic skills have changed up a bit. The only one you can store up and use at any time is the Fire Dragon, which attacks everything on the screen. The POW icon has been replaced with the Bushido Blade, which is immediately activated and summon gigantic shadowy warrior statues every time you slash. There are also glowing orbs, which will grant an extra life when you collect ten of them. Boxes are much rarer than before, as most items are dropped by enemies. Unfortunately, this also means bombs, which are even more numerous and annoying than they usually are.

Even though the core mechanics are familiar, there's something not quite right about everything. Sho doesn't control as tighly as before, and has a tendency to make extra movements when executing sword combos. And while the level designs in the previous Genesis Shinobi games weren't exactly the best, they were at least competant - here, they're overtly long and boring, as each stage is only comprised of a single long area, rather than two or three smaller areas, before the boss fight. Many areas are similar to the ones seen in previous games - medieval-style Japanese towns, biological laboratories, caves (complete with a mine cart ride), forests, and so forth. Similarly, the bosses themselves are fantastically unmemorable. All and all, it can't help but feel somewhat uninspired.

The worst of it, though, is the graphics. All of the sprites are digitized actors in rather goofy looking costumes. This was at least a few years after Mortal Kombat came around, so theoretically this fascination with live actor sprites should have worn off, but apparently the designers were still enamored with characters that looked "like real people". Except that, in execution, everything comes off as remarkably silly, especially the animation. The backgrounds look photorealistic (albeit as a low resolution), but realism is boring compared to the near-futuristic levels in the 16-bit titles. Forgot fearsome monsters and mechanical robots - mostly you're fighting other ninjas, birds, and occasional supernatural creature, like the big dinosaur thing, which looks like a ridiculous toy model. It's bloodier than before and it is cool to slice bad guys in half, with a spurt of blood as their torso falls off. If that wasn't laughable enough, after each level follows an FMV cutscene telling the story of ninja Sho and his quest to rescue his woman Aya. It's unclear whether the developers were paying homage to cheesy Saturday afternoon ninja serials, or they just didn't have a budget, but this is a C-grade level production with cheap locations, terrible acting, awful lighting and some massively dated 80s-grade synthesized music. In the English versions, the spoken dialogue is left in Japanese and subtitled, but it's still extremely corny.

While not an overtly terrible game, Shinobi Legions looks painfully dated, and the core game is sloppy and uninspired. Apparently Sega of America felt the same way, and opted not to publish it in America, instead licensing it to Vic Tokai. Sega of Europe did publish it in Europe, but apparently wasn't happy with the soundtrack, which is fairly standard, boring, and completely unbefitting the Shinobi name. To fix this, they pulled a situation similar to Sonic CD, where they replaced the soundtrack with music by a Western composer. The new tunes are provided by Richard Jacques, also known for his work on Sonic 3D Blast for the Saturn and Sonic R. While still not quite up to par with the Genesis games, it's also leaps and bounds better than the Japanese/American soundtrack, making it the superior version overall.

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Cinema Scenes

The Revenge of Shinobi - Game Boy Advance (2002)

American Cover

Despite sharing a title with the
Genesis game, The Revenge of
Shinobi for the Game Boy Advance
is a totally different bag of
shurikens. Developed by an
American company called 3d6
Games, which also worked on the
GBA Altered Beast title before
going out of business, and
published by THQ, this hackjob
totally misses the point of the
Shinobi series.

Taking place in feudal Japan,
the story focuses on a ninja named
Shinobi. His master tells him the
story of a warlord named Ashira-o,
who was destroyed by five shogun
and sealed within five swords.
Those swords eventually corrupted
all of the shogun, each of which is
associated with an element: fire,
wind, water, earth and darkness.
As such, Shinobi must take them
all down.

Disregarding nearly every element
of the series that came before it,
the title could very easily have
been "Generic Ninja Action Game",
and it both looks and feels like a
shoddy Amiga release. In order to complete each of
the many sprawling, non-linear
levels, you need to explore the
stages while rummaging through
all of the nearly identical looking
houses and caverns, in order to
find keys or switches to open up
the exit. You end up doing far
more running around than actual
fighting or platforming.

The combat is basic and
shallow, and can be reduced to
two techniques: either slash
mindlessly, or slash, wait a
second, then slash again. It's a
little sad that the enemy AI of a
1986 arcade game outshines that
of a 2002 portable game. In
addition to your sword, you can
chuck shurikens, but they are so
few in number as to be near
useless. Similarly, there are a
number of magic spells, each
associated with various elements,
but their use is also limited.

The animation is bad, the
scrolling is jarring, and the controls
are terrible. The mere act of
walking down steps is incredibly
difficult to execute on the GBA
pad. The background graphics are
colorful, if repetitive, but the
computer rendered sprites are
blurry, indistinct and ugly. The
music, which is comprised of
traditional Japanese instruments,
is a far stretch from the rest of the
series, but the sound quality is
decent for the system, at least.

The Revenge of Shinobi for
the Game Boy Advance isn't
entirely unplayable, like The Cyber
Shinobi on the Sega Master
System is, but it is still shockingly
dull. Instead, try Hudson's superior
Ninja Five-O on the GBA, which
does a far better job of capturing
the spirit of the series than this
sub-par product.